Winston Churchill

by Keegan, John

• ISBN13: 9780670030798
• ISBN10: 0670030791
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-14
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

When today's world leaders need inspiration and strength in times of crisis, they often turn to Winston Churchill, quoting him and citing his heroic example. The son of a member of Parliament, Churchill, a poor academic student, wanted to be a soldier early in life. But after he escaped from a South African prison camp, his national fame catapulted him into a life of politics. In this Penguin Life, the eminent historian John Keegan charts Churchill's career, following his steadfast leadership during the catastrophic events of World War II while England was dangerously poised on the brink of collapse. With wonderful eloquence, Keegan illuminates Churchill's incredible strength during this crucial moment in history and his unshakable belief that democracy would always prevail. Keegan looks at Churchill's speeches, which are some of the greatest examples of English oratory, and identifies his ability to communicate his own idea of an English past as the source of Churchill's greatness. He also sheds light on the political climate of Churchill's time. The result is an insightful, sensitive portrait of Churchill the war leader and Churchill the man.

Author Biography

John Keegan is one of the most distinguished contemporary military historians and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of twenty books, including his bestselling The First World War.

Table of Contents

Churchill and History	p. 1
Family and Youth	p. 18
The Army, 1894-1900	p. 35
Parliament, 1900-1910	p. 56
The Center of Events, 1910-1915	p. 74
War and Peace, 1915-1932	p. 92
The Coming of War, 1933-1940	p. 111
A Prime Minister Alone, 1940-1941	p. 130
The Big Three, 1941-1945	p. 151
Apotheosis	p. 171
Sources	p. 193
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter OneChurchill and HistoryCHURCHILL, to those who were young in the wartime years, could seem a figure of exaggerated stature. The young seek heroes, and-to this schoolboy citizen of a Britain besieged-the prime minister seemed anything but heroic. Heroes strode the streets in khaki or navy or air force blue, lean, fit, laughing, recently returned from battle or ready to depart. Churchill, in his shapeless siren suit and comic stovepipe hat, signatory cigar wedged between flabby fingers, looked wholly unsoldierly. The adulation of adults irritated: "Winston, good old Winston." A schoolboy in wartime Britain did not want an old Winston but a young Winston, someone as dashing as the pilots who flew from the local airfields, the commandos who sprinted in training down the local lanes, the torpedo-boat captains who sailed from the local ports to do battle in the narrow seas. Portly Winston, with his jowls and grating voice, appeared a poor fellow beside such paragons. The Winston of the postwar years was worse. There was ungraciousness in his response to the people's will, which turned him out of office in 1945, an aura about him of the bad loser. Whatever their parents' political opinions, whatever their own, the young could not help but be touched by the excitement of the social revolution the winning Labour party promised. Churchill the opposition politician put the worst possible face on the socialism it preached. The young took the offers of socialism at face value. A free health service for all sounded self-evidently a good thing, as did school and university scholarships for the clever and hardworking, irrespective of parental ability to pay; better state pensions for the old and the poor; new housing for slum dwellers; and secure employment for the survivors of the prewar slump. The Labour party said that it stood for a better Britain, and the young believed. Churchill's warning that a socialist Britain would be worse aroused disbelief, at least among the generation of the future. I was a member of that generation and remained quite immune to the Churchillian legend throughout my school and university years. Churchill was returned to office in 1951 and, despite several setbacks to his health-one almost disabling-remained prime minister until 1955. His was an extraordinary display of recovery and resilience. He was succeeded by his political son and heir, Anthony Eden, who brought with him into ministerial appointments many of the younger men who had learned their political trade in junior appointments during Churchill's wartime premiership. Despite that rejuvenation, Eden's continuation of Churchillian postwar government failed to appeal to the new electorate. He and his colleagues seemed to them heavily Conservative in the old-fashioned sense: traditionally imperialist abroad, selfishly capitalist at home. "Suez," as the British still call the attempt in 1956 to reimpose semicolonial control over the Suez Canal and the state of Egypt, through which it runs, seemed the touchstone of last-gasp Churchillianism. The Suez crisis divided the country. To the older, the military attack may have seemed a proper reassertion of the imperial power that Britain was entitled to exercise by virtue of its history; to the young, it appeared a crass attempt at exerting an imperial authority that belonged to its historical past. One way or another, the failure at Suez marked the termination of the overseas epic of which Churchill, throughout his long life, had been standard-bearer. Suez spoke finis to all for which Churchill had stood. Such, certainly, was my outlook as I came to the end of my education. Then, in a hot summer in New York City in 1957, a chance episode transformed my appreciation of the statesman under whom I had grown up. I had begun a journey through the United States, funded by a philanthropic American graduate of my Oxford college. I was waiting to join